She Don't Want The World
by Madelyn Gale
Summary: A WITH ONE HEADLIGHT UNIVERSE Novel. April thought she could make a fresh start, but sometimes the past clings to us tighter than we can let go. A/U, rated T
1. He'll Look Around the Room

She Don't Want the World

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: The TMNT and all associated characters are property of Mirage Studios, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Saban Entertainment, Nickelodeon, and all other associated parties. All original characters are creations of Madelyn Gale, who surrenders ownership to all associated parties. All characters, places and events are used fictitiously. This story is written for entertainment only; no money, property, or other compensation has been or will be exchanged for this work. "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People is used without permission.

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it. I don't recommend you let your baby brother or sister read it, let's put it that way.

* * *

Chapter One - "He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan"

* * *

Sometimes people just had to party. Like buying a new car - that was a great reason to throw a party. Or what about the birth of a new baby? If that wasn't cause for celebration, nothing was. And hey, April was in college now, baby! There were going to be so many graduation parties she wondered if she'd be able to hold her head up come May, or if she'd be so plastered she'd be glued to the toilet for a week.

But this was only March. Grad parties were two months away, and April O'Neil didn't know that many seniors yet, so there was no need to get ahead of herself. Besides, she had a major reason to celebrate right here, right now. This was going to be a private party, of course, so no need to print out a hundred invitations. There were only two guests, and that was plenty, because they were going to see just how high three girls could raise the roof tonight!

Her prey were out in the University quad, setting up camera equipment. Well, Oyuki was setting up the equipment. A journalism major like April, Yu handled her own camera, thank you very much. Her jet-black hair was pulled up in two pigtails that made her look like a live-action Sailor Moon wannabe, but at least this was sensible - it kept the back of her neck from sweating. This time she wasn't setting up for her own class. Irma, theatrically digging through her backpack and spreading papers all over the place, and generally making a mess, had some weird project she wanted video recorded. As April approached, she could hear Irma ranting about something, " - and then he doesn't have the decency to extend the deadline even though it was his fault that none of us had any access to the video stuff before this! I mean, the guy's a friggin' tyrant!" Looking up, Irma saw April skipping over to them. "Yo! Red!" She stood up and waved an arm dramatically. "What happened to you? You actually ace your physics test? You're glowing!"

Oyuki turned around and grinned. "Wow, yeah," she agreed quietly. "I haven't seen you this happy in a long time."

April gave a twirl and a mock-curtsy to her friends. "Ladies, we're going to O'Brian's tonight, and we're going to get fully plastered drinking to the fond memory of Dr. Baxter Stockman!"

Irma's eyes widened behind her glasses. "You killed him?" she asked excitedly. From another person that would be a joke, but Irma had secretly been hoping a tree would fall on Baxter for the last year-and-a-half. Irma had this weird aunt Imogene who claimed to know how to read tea leaves and palms (and who claimed she was a reincarnated platypus). After briefly meeting her during a visit to the campus, the old lady pulled April and Irma aside and assured them that Baxter would succumb to a tree falling on him. Irma interpreted that prophecy as April somehow hacking down a tree and killing him in the process.

"Even better," April promised (but Irma still pouted), "I left his ass and took everything with me!"

Oyuki laughed. "You'll get in trouble, girl! The stuff you bought together is community property. Don't you watch Judge Judy?"

April smirked at her Japanese friend. "We didn't buy stuff together! That's the beauty of it. Everything I bought, I kept the receipts for. Everything! And half the stuff that I had there was stuff I bought already, from years ago! The couch, the tables, my china -"

"Everything?" Yu asked.

"I still have most of the original boxes for the stuff I bought, with the receipts tucked inside! I told you being a pack-rat wasn't always a bad idea!"

Irma crowed and jumped up, punching the sky in victory, a mass of gypsy skirts and tights like a jumping jack in the middle of the quad. "You go girl! It's about friggin' time you dumped his butt! What finally got it through your thick head?"

April's grin faltered only slightly. "You know things were going downhill."

"We've been pretty well aware," Irma agreed. "Sit, sit! I want to hear details about your ass-leaving before we commence with the partying." She flopped in a pile of skirts right into the grass, dragging Oyuki with her per force.

April rolled her eyes but sat as well. The momentary elation from making the decision to leave had started to wear off. She didn't feel as confident as she had when she'd danced her way across the quad. Justifying to herself was one thing. Justifying to her friends was another. "I've been trying to keep things good between us, you know," she started. "Baxter's no angel, and neither am I, but I never wanted to just... you know. Leave him."

"So why did you?" Yu asked, coming to the point.

"Well..." April had come high on a sense of adventure. She'd just turned a new page in her life's diary, gotten rid of some excess baggage, felt good, felt pretty, felt alive! It wasn't until she came face-to-face with why she'd split that she started having second thoughts. "He threatened," she said, "to put my head on a monkey's body." Second thoughts became third thoughts. The elation sank down somewhere around her knees. "Maybe I'm just being stupid."

The two of them looked at each other, then at April, expecting clarification. Well, she'd opened the door, telling the two of them she'd left. Time to walk through it. "I invited him to lunch this afternoon..."

Lately, as Baxter became more distant and April struggled to keep them at least afloat, if not in the deep romance they'd known at the start, she'd gotten the idea to visit him at his lab. Yesterday, she'd finally gotten the nerve to show up, bringing a picnic lunch. The other two techs at the lab looked at her like she was some kind of bug under a microscope, but they let her in to see him.

Baxter was busy putting some kind of needles into a monkey's body. The monkey didn't move, except for its head, but it was secured to a table like it was some kind of monster about to make a break for it.

"Stockman," the big guy who showed April in called. "Visitor."

Baxter looked up so fast his glasses almost fell off. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

April looked at the monkey tied down, with its teeth bared, snapping at her boyfriend ineffectually. "Oh... I thought I'd surprise you with lunch. I don't figure you're working on some kind of virus that would wipe out the world or something, so I thought it'd be fun to get together and have a picnic." The monkey glared at her. April stared back. "You aren't doing that, are you?"

Baxter glanced at the monkey thoughtlessly. "No, of course not. We're trying to develop therapies to rehabilitate the spinal column of a quadriplegic patients. This little fellow here had that body this morning." He pointed to a headless monkey of the same species. "Only we're having some difficulty with the experiment. Transplant rejection." He looked back down at his notes, frowning over them. "Today wasn't a good day to come, April. I'm really going to be too busy for lunch. Some other time, all right?"

Some other time. Their whole relationship had devolved to "some other time," despite the fact that they'd been living together for over a year. We'll take that trip to the beach some other time. We'll visit your dad together some other time. We'll talk about getting married some other time.

But they always had time to talk about what he wanted. Wasn't it time she become financially stable? She agreed that they needed to keep separate checking accounts until they got married, but the point of that was to keep their money for themselves, so they could buy things without hurting each other financially. Only Baxter didn't stop at "What's mine is mine." When he started dictating how she was supposed to spend her own hard-earned cash, April got depressed. When he talked about putting her on an allowance, she went from depressed to angry.

When he started coming home late from work, his eyes wild, yelling and ranting about how unfair everything was, how his work wasn't appreciated, and so on and so on, the anger turned to nervousness. He didn't lash out or hit anything, but April started getting the feeling he was on edge about something.

The monkey-head transplant thing didn't help her unsettled feeling. "Your job here gets weirder and weirder," she said.

"Yes," was his only comment.

April wasn't sure what prompted her next comment. Maybe she was feeling threatened and was trying to assert herself, or maybe she was just making a joke. Even later, when she thought about it, April couldn't explain it to herself. She said, "My first project's coming up for my Writing, Reporting, and Ethics class. Maybe I could do a report on your progress here." Her voice upturned at the last syllable, trying to sound light and teasing.

Baxter apparently didn't take it that way. The clipboard that so captured his attention got tucked under his left arm as he advanced on her, until she was backed into the corner of a cold steel wall. He leaned over her, his body weight resting on his right hand, blocking her from the only means of escape. And smiled.

He had a sexy smile, April had to give him that. In his dark face, with his deep eyes, such good looks were hard to resist. That smile first brought her, a Journalism undergrad, under the spell of this reigning Doctor of Biology. But coupled with the way he leaned over her, and the dark tone of his voice, that smile seemed less sexy and more threatening.

"Sweetheart," he said - no, purred, "if you try that, I'll transplant your head to a monkey's body. I have enough trouble with PETA and the ethics board as it is. The last thing I need is you harassing me. Do we understand each other?"

"Uh..."

He pushed away from her then, suddenly as back to normal as he ever got. "Besides, I can't publish anything until my research is done. A good scientist has to have solid results that can be replicated in the lab more than once. Since we've had too many problems with tissue rejection, anything I publish now will be a career killer. Oh. Damn." He looked away from her, toward the monkey. "The head died. Well, nothing we can do about that."

He gave her the smile again. At least he wasn't looming over her this time. "You worry about getting your degree and being a big star reporter, and then I'll tell you when you can write publications about me. Okay?"

"Okay," she agreed quietly. "I'll just..."

"Go enjoy your lunch by yourself, sweetheart. We'll make plans for lunch some other time."

He hadn't threatened her. The thing about putting her head on a monkey body, that was a joke. It couldn't be done. He was being distant. He was being cold. She wasn't threatened. Ignored, yes, heaven knew, and treated like a little kid, but he'd never threatened her. Ignored meant you worked harder at your relationship. You didn't run away from ignored. You ran away from a threat.

Irma stood up. "Where's your stuff?" she demanded. "Everything you took."

"Well, one of the guys downstairs is moving in, and he'd rented one of those you-carry-it trailers. I helped him unload it, he helped me load it up, but I left it in front of the apartment - hey, no!" She waved at Oyuki, already starting to put away all the equipment she had worked so hard to unload. "Guys, come on, Baxter's going to be at the lab for hours! Let's just go celebrate!"

"Uh-uh," Yu shook her head. She snapped her camera back into its protective case while Irma chased down the last of her flying paperwork and shoved it into a backpack. "Do you know what you sounded like while you were telling that story?"

"No..."

She put down the case and pointed at April sternly. "You sounded like you were really scared. Know what you sound like now?"

"...what?"

"Like a woman who's scared to admit she's scared. We're going to get that U-Haul, and we're getting your stuff into storage now. And then we're going to take you out to O'Brian's, have a few drinks, and get you into a hotel room. Away from campus."

Protests were cut off before they could be started. Irma shoved her backpack at April. "You know, there's more kinds of abuse than physical abuse, April," she said. "There's emotional, and mental, all kinds. You don't sound like you when you talk about Doctor Baxter Stockman. You sound like some scared little kid who doesn't want to upset the monster in the closet." April was on her feet, being propelled forward by Irma's hands on her shoulders. Irma was short, but pretty strong. "You sounded like that the last time we talked to you, too. I don't want you sounding like that anymore."

"Neither do I," Yu said quietly, following beside them.

"You scare your friends when you start acting like that. Well, we've got news for you. If Dr. Stockman wants you back, he's going to have to earn you back first, and that's that." Irma took the lead now, heading to the University parking lot. "And from the way he sounds, that's not going to happen."

"You guys don't really know him."

"We know you. We don't need to know him to know he's no good for you. So buck up, girlie. We're not your best friends for nothing, you know."

April stopped beside Irma's beat-up Chevy whatever-it-used-to-be and looked between them. Oyuki Mamishi, long hair in pigtails, her eyes serious. The left eye didn't quite track right, a souvenir from a mother who pitched glass bottles at people and threw her only daughter out when she was thirteen. Irma Langinstein, hair tied up with colorful scarves, looking either like a bag lady or a Jewish Cyndi Lauper, who endured taunts and teasing until she finally got to the University, where a thousand people came and went, some stranger than Irma could hope to be, without anyone noticing except to comment that so-and-so was absent today.

April's eyes welled up. "Thanks, guys," she said hoarsely.

"Get in the damn car, Red, before I make you walk home!" Irma yanked open the driver's side door and had the car started before her friends even sat down. "Everything's in the U-haul?"

April fastened her belt as Irma backed out of the parking space. "Well... my clothes, my laptop, I think I left my purse behind -"

"Yeah, yeah. You're lucky you have us, Red. We're grabbing your stuff. All your stuff. And then we're going to celebrate. You deserve it."

"Yeah, guys," April agreed, finding her smile again. "I'm lucky to have both of you."

* * *

_Robert's got a quick hand._  
_He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan._  
_He's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid._  
_Yeah, he found a six shooter gun._  
_In his dad's closet hidden with a box of fun things, and I don't even know what._  
_But he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you._

It was a quarter to seven when Dr. Baxter Stockman tried his key in the door to his apartment, only to find it unlocked, the door creaking open with a tiny push. He stepped inside to find his apartment plundered of all but the most basic of furniture. Even one of the couches was gone.

Of course. April had taken everything that belonged to her. He felt a small pang between his eyes, suggesting a migraine starting. Nothing unusual where April was concerned. Maybe he should have gone on that damn picnic with her. If he'd kept her under better control, he wouldn't have to put up with sleeping on a naked bed without sheets. Why hadn't he bothered to supply some of the linens when they moved in together? Not everything was gone, of course. Just everything that April could lay claim to, which amounted to less than half of the -

Wait, everything she owned was gone?

His eyes scanned the desk she'd left behind (original to the apartment, belonging to neither of them). The laptop.

The apartment was cold - it was early enough in March that without the heater on, it could be uncomfortably chilly - but Baxter felt a sheen of sweat on his neck. "No," he muttered. "No, no, no..." It wasn't on the desk. He ran to their room, pulled open drawers of his bureau, searched through the closets, looked under the remaining couch, dug through the trash.

How hard could it be to miss a bright yellow laptop?

It wouldn't be. So the laptop wasn't there.

Damn.

He looked around and found a packet of cigarettes. April had been on him to quit smoking for so long, finding hidden packets was second-nature. He lit up and smoked it down to the filter so quickly he barely remembered exhaling. "All right," he said to nobody in particular.

Drastic measure time.

His "associates" would be very, very annoyed to find out he'd lost the laptop, but they'd be furious if Baxter didn't tell them about it and they found out anyway. He sat down in the leather chair - always his chair; April didn't like the way it smelled - flipped open his cell phone. The number was on auto-dial, number 1. He pressed, held, and heard the phone dial.

There was a click as someone picked up. No words on the other end, though. They didn't work that way. "It's me," Baxter said. "We've got a problem."

A woman's voice now. "I don't like hearing that."

"My girlfriend left. She took the laptop."

"I like that even less."

"We need it back. Tonight. Our clients are expecting their supplies in the morning."

"Okay."

"We need this taken care of. She'll be out... let me think."

"Better think quickly." The woman sounded calm. The calm probably was a lie. She had as big a stake in this as Baxter, or the others.

He blew smoke out his nose. She'd go to a hotel, right? But what hotel? Did April have money for a hotel or did she crash at a motor lodge or... Okay, he was panicking. Forget the hotel. They'd have to catch April out in public. If something were to... happen to her... yes, there'd be some suspicion on Baxter. The husband or boyfriend or whatever was always the first suspect. But his "associates" were professionals. They could take care of her, and Baxter would look like an innocent man. An innocent, bereaved man.

And if something happened to her, something gang-related, let's say, why should they accuse Baxter? Why should they want to look at the laptop? Even if they did check the laptop out, what would they find? Journalism notes, a few of Baxter's notes from the classes he taught, and a secret file of love letters between the two of them.

There was no way anybody could find anything except love letters. No way. No way possible.

Baxter started sweating harder.

_Daddy works a long day._  
_He'll be coming home late, he's coming home late._  
_And he's bringing me a surprise._  
_'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice._  
_I've waited for a long time._  
_Yeah the sleight of my hand is now a quick-pull trigger,_  
_I reason with my cigarette,_  
_And say, "Your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah."_

"Okay. How's this: she visits her dad at the nursing home every weekend. Tomorrow morning she'll be on her way there."

"She doesn't always go on Saturdays. Sometimes she goes Sunday morning. We'd lose a day. And you said our client's are waiting for their stuff, didn't you?"

Baxter took another drag. He didn't know that they knew April's schedule like that. "You've been keeping an eye on her?"

"On both of you." He could hear the woman smile. "We don't trust you."

Baxter didn't blame them. Given the chance, he'd double-cross them. They'd do the same thing to him. It was just the way business worked. "Okay." Had he really gone through three cigarette? He dumped the ash right on the floor. "Right, has to be tonight."

He lit another cigarette and took a long drag on it. Where the hell could she go after this? Wait. Wait a minute. She had those friends, the crazy Jew and that Japanese girl. Neither of them had the room to take in a stray undergrad, so their places were out, but didn't they always go places together? No, not places. There was that stupid bar they dragged him to once. Played a bunch of Irish music. He just couldn't get into it. But the girls loved it. And went whenever they had an excuse.

"I think I know where she'll be. But she's got these two girls who will be with her." He tried to remember what they did on their nights out, but beyond the bar, he couldn't think of anything. And they always went out together, as a group. Three girls... that might be harder. Baxter didn't like the idea of a noose around his neck. The more people involved, the more he could feel one tightening around him.

"Can we do all three girls?"

"Of course."

"And none of it will point back at me?"

"Do you think we're stupid? How long have we been doing this?"

Baxter didn't answer that. He looked at the clock. Seven-twelve. Good, he hadn't been too long worrying over this. There was still time. "They go to this bar. They always go together and they stay until late. I don't know how long ago they went there. The last time I saw April was around noon. They couldn't have taken off before two. They'd need time to get her shit together and find some place to park it."

"So what?"

"So... they probably either just went out or have been out for a bit."

"You're rambling." The woman's tone was warning.

"Okay. Okay, sorry. The bar, it's called O'Brian's. Every time one of them has a sob story or they feel like goofing off, they go there. They might be there now."

"Might be." The woman scoffed. "If they're not there then how the hell do we find them?"

"They're probably there now. If they aren't, they're on their way. They never come home before ten. It's, what... seven-twenty now? If you can't get them on their way in, you can get them coming out."

"And if they don't show? What if they decide they're too tired and go home instead?"

"They'll be there. Trust me. April's pretty predictable. So are her friends. You just have to wait."

"I'd rather it happen when they're coming out," the woman said. "Between the bar and their cars. Make it look like a gang fight gone wrong. Some innocent people got in the middle. It happens."

Baxter had the same thought earlier, but then he remembered the geography, and swore. "Gangs don't hang out around O'Brian's. It's not that kind of a bar."

There was quiet on the phone. He thought he'd been put on hold, that she was talking to the other two. They never seemed to be apart. Then he heard her again. "All right. You're right, that area's no good for that kind of scene. So we're going to take care of it ourselves."

Baxter put the cigarette out on the arm of the chair, sitting forward. "Yourselves? You... won't get caught, right?"

"How long have we been doing this? You need that laptop tonight, right?"

"Yeah. It would be bad if I didn't get the stuff to our clients. We'd lose a lot of money."

"Sugar," the woman said darkly, "it's not the money we're worried about. If anybody finds out what's on that laptop, our 'clients' are as good as dead. Unless they kill us first."

Baxter's throat went dry. "Could they do that? I mean, you're protected by -"

"Our people don't go for that kind of stuff," the woman cut him off. "Even they have standards."

"You three went for it!"

"We like money better than standards."

"So..." The neck of his suit shirt felt too tight against his Adam's apple. "So your people won't protect us?"

"Probably not. They'll avenge our deaths, but that's protocol. They won't do diddily squat for you. You didn't make them any money. So we're going to take care of it tonight. Ourselves. And keep this in mind, Stockman - you are going to owe us. Big time. So you better be ready to jump the minute we say jump. Because we're going out on a limb here, risking getting ourselves caught."

Sweat ran into Baxter's eyes. "Okay," he said. "Whatever you say."

"Good. We'll kill April O'Neil and her little friends, and you get the laptop back. You send out clients their stuff in the morning, and we go on about our happy lives." The woman paused. "Wear the grey suit to the funeral. And you damn well better cry when the police question you. Or we'll make sure you cry."

The phone disconnected.

Baxter sat there, holding the cell phone in his hand, staring at it stupidly, and wondered what the hell he'd just gotten himself into.

_All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, outrun my gun._  
_All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, faster than my bullet._


	2. Where Secrets Lie in the Border Fires

_She Don't Want the World_

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for Full Disclaimer. The song "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down is used without permission.

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it.

* * *

Chapter 2 - " Where Secrets Lie in the Border Fires"

* * *

The key to teaching well lies in the ability of the teacher to make lessons look like play. From the time his children were babies, they'd played "catch me if you can," first through their small home, then through the labyrinth of darkness that protected them from the outside world. These days the open skies were their playground. Their goal was simple - get from one place to another, going under, over, or through any obstacles in their way without wasting precious time. As children, the four young ones had fun trying to outwit each other to reach the end.

Now that they were nearly grown, the fun of following their father through the pathways and skyways of New York, which didn't seem to exist to anyone else, was enhanced by martial training. At times, their leader would turn on them, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes taking all four of them at once, forcing them to shift their thinking from motion to battle, and just as swiftly would break off his attack to turn them a different direction.

The full moon rising behind them kept them from being entirely shrouded, as did the simple glow of the City itself. That was also part of the fun - darting from shadow to shadow, remaining unseen in a world where they would stand out like the glow of the sun in the middle of the night if they were ever caught. From construction sites to hollowed-out hovels, they darted and weaved, unseen by the local watch, random police officers, squatters making their homes in condemned buildings. Their father lead them on a chase that was a spiral, turning in on itself and leading somewhere special. Tonight was an anniversary that they never neglected, though the fire of the night-run prevented it from being the mournful memorial it might otherwise be.

Perhaps he should have cautioned them to silence. Their movements were so fluid, so perfect, that he should have reprimanded his youngest son when the boy let out a howl of laughter as he flew from the rooftop, overtaking his father and darting past. Yet, he did not. Instead, he let out a war-cry of his own, giving chase after the boy, who was all laughter and joy. Behind him, the other three also called out their frenzied joy at the run.

If below them startled humans looked around, unable to spot the source of the noise, well, it was their own fault for not being more attentive. The five of them only came this far once a year, for memory, to make peace with the past, to preserve the memory and dignity of one lost too soon. Their father would rather it be a time of happiness, to share the joys of the year gone, to look forward to the simple pleasures of the year to come, and if that meant letting the boys be a little loud, a little exuberant, well, it was a more fitting gift to her memory than a somber procession in silence, weighted with grief.

Tang Shen would have wanted them happy. And for seventeen years, Hamato Splinter had tried to live up to her expectations.

* * *

O'Brian's was hopping, even for a Friday night. When you live on a college campus, and your home team kicked serious ass on the football field, everybody lit up, even people who weren't crazy about sports like Irma and April. Oyuki kept up with the scores but didn't bother going to the games. That was okay; everybody danced around and laughed like they all knew what was going on even if they didn't.

Three different guys hit on April over the course of the evening. For the first time in about a year she let herself flirt back. It was all fun teasing, of course. She wasn't interested in hooking up with anyone, even if her friends had been willing to let her do such a thing. That didn't matter – the flirting felt good, and she had a lot of fun dancing with everybody willing to have a go at the dance floor.

Irma, as the designated driver, was living it up with free soda all night. Oyuki wasn't inclined to get drunk, even if she wasn't the one driving. She'd didn't trust herself drunk, and she certainly didn't trust anyone around her if she was drunk. The pair of them also kept April's drinking to a minimum – "You don't want to go see your dad tomorrow with a hangover, do you?" Irma pointed out.

Having no argument for that, April nursed about a Cosmo an hour, getting pleasantly buzzed without getting smashed. After a rather energetic dance with a white guy who'd dyed his almost-buzz-cut blue, April flopped down in the corner booth where Yu and Irma were chatting, her face red and sweaty. "Whew! I don't think I've danced that much in my life!" She grabbed a napkin and wiped her face down, then fanned herself with it. "Cool group they've got. But I don't think I've ever heard of them."

"They're some new group," Yu said, sipping her margarita. "I think this is just a warm-up act, though. There was supposed to be something about heavy-metal bagpipes later."

"Bagpipes?" April couldn't suppress a giggle. "Can that even work?"

"Don't knock it," Irma said, jabbing a finger at her friend. "You take half of what's out there and it comes from either Celtic or British music, or some other native stuff. Rock, pop, metal, it's all the same. All comes from the same source."

"Nothing new under the sun, huh, Irma?" April polished off her Cosmo and looked at it longingly. "Any chance you guys would let me get another?"

Yu's cheerful "Nope!" deflated any hope of taking her buzz up a level. "We should get your butt tucked in bed somewhere, anyway. You got everything you need for the night? Change of clothes, class assignments, laptop, your meds…"

April gave Irma a sidelong look. "Who designated _her_ my mother?"

"I think she's drunk and trying to hide it. Are you drunk, Yu?"

Oyuki snorted. "No. I'm just worried about April. I don't like the idea of dumping you at some hotel."

"Better than her staying on campus, where the good Doctor can find her."

"Yeah, but how long are we going to be able to keep her in a hotel? They get damned expensive after a while."

April waved to get their attention. When that didn't work, she shoved two fingers in her mouth and blew a shrill whistle that attracted the attention of half the bar. "Guys, chill! I thought I told you, I have a place to stay!"

Both girls blinked at her, depriving her of the fantasy that she'd already told them her plans for the evening. "Remember the junk shop my daddy used to run? Our apartment was upstairs. I always stop by on the weekends after I see Daddy to make sure the place is still clean, no squatters, and the guy who runs the shop hasn't screwed up the till. I'd been thinking about moving back there ever since he had the stroke anyway, getting it up to code so he can move back in, but it just cost too much to make the changes, and anyway, Baxter didn't want to leave the campus."

"Duh!" Yu wadded up a paper straw cover into a tiny ball and tossed it at April's head. "You really thought he'd move in with you?"

"Well, come on, it's got two apartments, plus the basement. We could say he was renting one from me –"

"And meanwhile you both get nailed for inappropriate behavior or whatever they nail you for when you sleep with your profs," Irma put in dryly.

"I only had him one semester! We didn't start seeing each other until after I wasn't his student anymore!"

"April, sweetie," Irma said, "this might be hard for you to understand since you're probably riding a buzz straight up, but nobody gives a crap. He'd be in hot water for banging the student body whether your body had been in his classroom before or not. It's called professional ethics." She pushed her glasses up her nose, not looking as amused as she had a moment ago. "And speaking of ethics, you better start acquiring some of your own. Hear me out."

She raised a hand to forestall April's interruption. Yu sat back in the seat, arms folded, in apparent agreement with what Irma was saying from the grim line her mouth made. "You're not in high school anymore, Red. This isn't like it was when we were sixteen and could slip love-notes to the teacher and all we'd get is a laugh and a talking to."

"And what is it with you and older guys anyway?" Oyuki asked.

Irma kept right on going. "You thought Chet was going to be the love of your life and he ended up hurting you. Some guys are assholes. That doesn't mean you jump into bed with the first person who looks nice and brings you flowers. You rebounded so fast I thought you were going to get whiplash."

April folded her arms and glared at the pair of them. "You done lecturing me?"

"_I_ am. Yu?"

"No." Yu leaned forward. "You moved in with a guy you barely knew because he was sweet to you for a little while, and then you found out he was a pretty scary fuck. You and Chet were growing apart back before we even graduated, but you didn't even notice until we got to college. I like romance, too, April, but you keep pinning your hopes and dreams on some Romeo coming to rescue you, and you're not paying attention to reality. Right now, you're a magnet for anyone who wants to use you because you're letting yourself be used."

She sank back into the vinyl seat cushion. "If you want a guy in your life, fine, _but want him because you want him_, not because you think somehow everything's going to be easier if you've got a boyfriend to take care of you. If you want my advice –"

"Not really."

"Shove it. You're getting it anyway. Stop dating. Just for a while. Get your life together. Go find yourself a hobby you like, set up the apartment the way you want it, go see your dad more often. Get a dog. Get a cat. Get a life. _Then_ get a boyfriend. You'll be happier."

She shouldn't be angry at them. They were trying to help, even though their words were bitter to swallow. But April got defensive anyway. "You know how hard it is being the only one taking care of your dad while your mom and sister are hiding out in California? Like it was the only place far enough away from this mess they could get to?" Maybe she shouldn't have drunk so much. She wasn't plastered, but her inhibitions were lowered enough that yelling at them seemed like the thing to do. "All this stuff got piled on _me_, not anybody else. All I'm looking for is someone to help me out! Be there for me! Not just go off and do their own thing."

"What you're looking for," Irma said gently, "is a family. You've got that, April. Yu and I are here, and we're not going anywhere. You couldn't get rid of us with a crow bar. Random guys who want to shack up with you aren't going to be there for you when you really need them? How often was Baxter there, huh? Or Chet?"

She didn't respond, just sunk lower in her seat and sulked.

"But you asked us for help and we came running, right? Stop looking for some guy to be the answer to all your problems. It's not going to happen. You have to start trusting us."

"The last time I trusted someone to help me with Daddy, Momma contributed the divorce papers and took off with Robyn."

"Yeah," Oyuki said, "your mother sucks. She abandoned you guys. That doesn't mean everybody else will. And it doesn't mean the rest of us don't care. Oh jeez, it's already after eleven."

April glanced at her watch and scowled: 11:22. "We're going to have to pack it in. I need sleep before I go see Daddy tomorrow."

"Yeah, well, I rented a unit and got all your big stuff in storage, you're welcome," Irma said, paying the tab and throwing down a decent tip. The wait staff here was always awesome. "You left your overnight and weekend stuff in my car, right?"

"Yeah. I just shoved everything in the backpack."

Yu got up and stretched, excusing herself to the ladies room while Irma and April headed to the car. "Yu means well," Irma said. "She just never learned how to say something nicely. What she was getting at – what we're both getting at – is we love you, Red." She popped the door open for April, but the red-haired woman stopped and leaned heavily against the car. "You're not feeling sick, are you, Red?"

"I'm just so damn tired," April whispered. "I'm tired of feeling like everything I do is the wrong thing. I can't even pick a decent guy."

"Hey, look who you're talking to! I'm a third-generation Shadchen and I can't even hook myself up with anyone, never mind match-making for anybody else." She patted her friend's shoulder, the pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Don't worry, Red. We're here for you."

"You ladies ready to head out?" Yu called from across the parking lot. Typically she got shotgun, but since April was already there, she graciously took the back seat. "Hey," Yu said, buckling up, "Baxter doesn't know where the junk shop is, right?"

April said, "No. He never came to see Daddy with me, so he never saw the shop, and I don't think he cared enough for me to tell him where it is. He knows it's north. That's about it."

"Good. I don't want that low-life sneaking out to serenade you or throw you roses or something to win you back and you go all female on us about it."

"Yu, did anyone ever tell you you're a bitch when you drink?"

Yu counted on her fingers, "My mom, you, Irma, two ex-boyfriends, Irma's aunt Imogene -"

"We'll take that as a yes," Irma said, backing out of the parking lot. "You'll have to give me directions. I've never been there before, either."

"That's cool. I'm a living GPS, remember? But we won't be able to park near the shop. The streets are too narrow, and a large part of the neighborhood was burned out years ago. We'll park a block down from it and then walk. Any chance either of you brought a flash light?"

Yu snickered. "Red, that's what cell phone apps are for, remember?"

* * *

Three of them stood in the O'Brian's parking lot. Two men and a woman. They were about as non-descript as they could get. A red hoodie and black shorts on the woman with a white T-shirt underneath; both men wore jeans and T-shirts, one a solid blue, grungy, the other declaring, "Sarcasm: Because Beating the Crap Out of People is Illegal."

They didn't look their ages, either. A few strokes of makeup and the woman looked like a girl in her early twenties, instead of a toned woman of forty. One guy had a shaved head, made him look tough but slightly dumb. The other had a rounded baby face with Asian features. In a pinch, he could pass for white, for Native American, for someone with Down's Syndrome. He'd done all three before.

They didn't look like anything. They could be anybody. That was part of the plan. Looks were one reason their boss hired them. Being smart enough to kill people without getting caught had also been on the requirements' list.

They stood by their car, talking about weather, and sports, and anything that wasn't about killing people, because they didn't talk shop when they weren't working.

It was almost eleven-thirty when three girls came out of the pub. First girl, no question at all about this one. Bright blue knee-length skirt on top of a bright orange ankle-length one, dark blue tights under them, wrist-length white blouse with an orange vest, and some weird hair covering that wasn't a scarf. Her picture had her in tie-dye jeans and a fringe blouse of many colors going down to her waist. Even without seeing her face, they had her.

Second girl, Asian, with long hair tied up in pigtails. Jeans, T-shirt, the usual. Snub-nose, that was the only guarantee they had the right girl. In the photograph, her hair had been shorter.

Third one, a red-head, five-foot-five, with green eyes and freckles that didn't quite go away with age. She was even wearing the same Transformers T-shirt she had on in the photo Baxter sent them.

"Do 'em now?" the woman asked. "Three shots, pop-pop-pop and we're done."

The bald guy shook his head. "Guns are messy. You hit a stray target, the boss will find out about it. Then he'll want to know why we were killing the girls in the first place. Then he'll kill _us_." Baldy was a pessimist. He preferred the term "realist," but the woman didn't buy it.

"Anyway," the Asian guy put in, "the parking lot's too full. Too many witnesses. Too many cameras."

She wasn't going to win this argument, but tried anyway. "No cameras out here. That's why we parked here. Nobody will see anything."

The Asian guy said, "We're across the street from a bank and a couple of other stores. Our car got caught on some kind of camera somewhere. You know police techs. They'll figure out where and when and link us to the bullets."

The lady gave up. "What, then?"

"I'm working on it," Baldy said, getting in the car. The others got in, too, frustrated that they didn't have a plan for this. Usually shit like this didn't happen, and when it did, they had time to think it out.

"Still, better that we do it than sending some of the gang," the Asian guy said. They all agreed on that one. If they'd left it to some of the gang, this whole parking lot would be a bloodbath, and their boss would connect them to it, and want to know why they'd ordered a hit way outside their territory. He'd find out about the laptop. Their boss found out about _everything_. He didn't use very nice methods to find things out, either.

And then he'd do some not-nice things to the three of them before killing them.

They drove in silence, following the beat up Chevy... "What kind of car _is_ that?" the woman asked.

Baldy squinted. "Beats me. Looks like a franken-car. Shove some shit together, stick a motor in it, and go."

"A car like that would be easy to recognize," she said. "Thought of something yet?"

"Couple of things. We're heading into Dragon territory. Get behind 'em, follow 'em when they stop, a couple of cuts, then dump 'em in the center of the Dragon's den. Get the laptop but hide the rest of their shit where the Dragons usually dump their stuff. Make it look like the P.D.'s did it. Takes it off of us, puts it on them. Boss won't figure we'd go into P.D. territory without permission."

The Asian guy said, "So what do we do, grab them when they get out of the car? We have to move fast."

"No," the woman said. "We have to move _efficiently_, not _fast_. Fast is gang stupid. Fast gets you in trouble. You leave something behind, then the cops can trace you and nail you to the wall."

None of them were afraid of the cops. They were all _very_ afraid of their boss, though. And what he would do to them.

The Asian guy spoke up. "I say we wait until they get where they're going and then scout the place. Come up with something on the fly."

Baldy said, "You think that's going to work? Think we can pull it off?"

"How long have we done this?" the woman asked. "We've done more with less. Keep going. We'll know what to do when the time comes."

* * *

The burned-out buildings hadn't been torn down yet, though there was always some kind of construction work going on nearby. Bureaucracy held up the re-development of the fire-ravaged buildings. Most of them had been small shops, a few tenements, none of them large buildings. Squatters were a problem on this side of the burn-out. The five moved silently through the shadows to the remains of the tenement they were looking for. Officially, Tang Shen had lived in a studio apartment on the third floor, but back then hardly anyone paid her any mind. Her real home - _their_ real home - had been the basement.

_A hundred days have made me older_

_Since the last time that I saw your pretty face_

_A thousand lies have made me colder_

_And I don't think I can look at this the same_

_But all the miles that separate_

_Disappear now when I'm dreaming of your face_

The first few years, they brought flowers. Lately, they hadn't needed to. Her memory didn't require gifts to put the past to rest anymore. Whatever little bits of furniture hadn't been destroyed in the fire was long gone, stolen by vagrants passing through, or destroyed for fire-wood. That was all right. They didn't need such reminders, either. They had two photographs, one of Shen on her wedding day, one from some time after they arrived in America. They had their father's memories of the early days. They even had the fire, and how they lost her, though time and distance had taken the sting of it from Splinter's soul.

_Everything I know, and anywhere I go_

_It gets hard but it won't take away my love_

_And when the last one falls_

_When it's all said and done_

_It gets hard but it won't take away my love_

They lit incense and cleaned out the refuse that collected over the year. Maybe March was too early for Obon, but they celebrated anyway, as best they could, with their limited resources. There were stories. Splinter always told them stories. His early life; how he'd received training; meeting Shen; coming to America, and then the fire.

They listened, enraptured, though at least his second-youngest insisted on feigning disinterest. There were questions. A life such as theirs would prompt questions.

"Do you ever wonder _why_ everything happened the way it did?" his eldest asked.

"I do, but don't dwell on the question. Answers are rare in this life. But I trust - I _know_ - that everything happens for a reason. That is enough to give us peace of mind." He stood up, leading the four out of the cellar, and turned his eyes to the sky. "It is nearly midnight," he said quietly. The full moon had long since set. They would take candles to the East River, perfectly hidden, and float them down river as they released Shen's spirit back to the Other World. They each turned one last time, to say goodbye to what had been her grave. The fire had taken so much of her that there was hardly anything left to cremate. The tiny portion recovered from the scene was buried in a small, unmarked grave. Splinter had gone there once, on his own, but felt nothing. Here, with his sons, he could feel her close.

_I'm here without you baby_

_But you're still on my lonely mind_

_I think about you baby_

_And I dream about you all the time_

_I'm here without you baby_

_But you're still with me in my dreams_

_And tonight girl its only you and me_

* * *

"Maybe we should park closer," Irma murmured.

April sighed. "There's no space. That's the bad part. But the neighborhood's fairly decent."

"Fairly decent," Yu said, "doesn't mean there won't be trouble." She lit the camera light on her phone using the flashlight app, and grabbed April's backpack from beside her in the back seat. "Stick together."

"Yeah," April agreed. The three of them exited together, Oyuki passing the bag to April. "It's only two blocks over."

"Two blocks is two blocks." Irma shivered, even though it wasn't cold.

* * *

"Well this is interesting," the woman in the car said. "Kill the lights." Baldy doused the headlights. The car slipped below five miles an hour.

The woman drew a Beretta, silencer already screwed on, from under her hoodie. "See," she said. "What did I tell you? We'd know what to do when the time came. Park there." She gestured to the side of the road.

Baldy parked. The Asian guy had a short knife. Baldy stuck with a six-shooter. No silencer, but what the hell. Nobody around here was going to hear them anyway. "Okay," he said, cutting the engine, "let's do the work and go home."

* * *

The youngest boy touched his arm, a quiet gesture. "Father," the boy asked, "you really think there's a reason for _everything_?"

"Yes." He wrapped an arm around his child's shoulders in a light hug. "I have only to look upon your faces to know that everything that has come to pass was meant to be."

The child nodded and headed out into the world, but Splinter couldn't resist one last look behind him, his heavy for a moment with memory. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and tore himself from memory.

The five stayed in shadow, watching a car drive past and turn down a nearby alley. Not unusual; the streets here were narrow, the few buildings that escaped the conflagration had few parking spaces. A second turned down the same street, then slowed, well below the speed limit. The headlights went out, the vehicle driving dark.

Splinter's eyes narrowed. Something was wrong, very wrong. Though this was supposed to be a peaceful outing to remember the dead, none of them were foolish enough to travel unarmed. He drew his ninjaken, his sons following suit.

"Father?"

"I don't know," he whispered, "but be ready for anything, " and lead them deeper into the shadows.


	3. Pushing Me off Life's Little Edge

_She Don't Want the World_

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for Full Disclaimer

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it.

Author's Note: You may have noticed there are no song lyrics in this chapter. I've only written one "songfic," that being "Nothing Is Forever," the prequel to this novel. In my mind, a "songfic" is a story that starts with a song and someone writes a story around it, as I did in the case of "Nothing Is Forever." There, the song lyrics were as important to the story as what I wrote.

In the previous chapters of _She Don't Want the World_ I used some song lyrics at particular points because those songs were the "soundtrack" I was hearing during the writing process. In those cases, feel free to ignore the lyrics if you choose, because they are meant to set a musical mood, not to help tell the story. Here, I was so focused on the events unfolding I didn't "hear" a soundtrack in my head; hence, no lyrics.

This is probably going to be the first chapter I re-write once the whole novel is done. I like it a lot, and I can't wait to see how polished it will turn out in the re-write!

* * *

Chapter 3 - Pushing Me off Life's Little Edge

* * *

Two blocks in the dark, even with flashlight apps on, was a creepy walk. Creepy didn't necessarily mean scary, though. Irma and April both had a slight case of the giggles. Somehow the cool spring night felt more like a sweet October evening, when every little ghost and goblin running around could be placated with chocolates and candied apples, where every bonfire was surrounded by toasted marshmallows and hot chocolate, and people squealed when "stuffed scarecrows" came alive to give them a chase.

Oyuki didn't share that sentiment.

The night air around them quieted, the way a forest hushed when something predatory came slinking through. Yu fell behind the others a half-step, then a full step, letting them get ahead of her. She needed away from their chatter, their hushed-unnerved-laugher, to know what the absence of sound meant.

Hadn't there been noises in the night? This was New York City, after all - sirens and car alarms and swearing and airplanes, the noise conquered all. All of that was drowned out by the quiet.

Yu remembered. Thirteen years old, and being hunted. There was a moment of double-vision, where the street lamps seemed to glow in a certain pattern, leaving the impression of butterfly wings on the ground, before she blinked it away. Memory left her, but left behind the old adrenaline rush.

In the here-and-now, butterfly wings hung over her head, about a block-and-a-half away. April, in her youth, had made the beaten copper and crystal butterfly dangle that hung from the old "Second-Time Around" sign.

Living things cold look so beautiful, and be so damn poisonous. Oyuki hated butterflies. They looked like colored paper in flight, but so did an arterial blood spatter from a gunshot wound.

What made the night so quiet? She couldn't hear human squabbling, though there had to be people around. Couldn't make out the sounds of planes in flight. No sirens, no car alarms, no cars in motion -

A car had stopped moving. It had been moving so slowly she hadn't registered it until the engine cut off completely.

They were being stalked.

"When the door began to crack," Yu sang softly, "it was like a bullet at my back."

"Sorry?" April started to turn around. "I didn't hear what you said -"

Oyuki heard the car door crack, and flung herself at her friends. _"GET DOWN!"_

Irma fell beneath her, caught unawares of her friend's tackle, but April, sweet, stupid April, took a half-step backward, out of Yu's reach, and then she jerked twice, small spheres going into her leg and belly, gouts of blood coming from the back of her T-shirt and jeans. Only then did she fall down.

Irma screamed. Yu probably screamed, though she didn't have time to think about whether she was screaming or not. Irma clawed Yu off of her and scurried to April's side. Yu left them there.

She'd been hunted many times in her life, but Oyuki Mamishi was _nobody's_ prey.

She had a gun, of course - Irma and April didn't need to know about it, so she never told them. The people who had shot her friend didn't know about it, either, until she rolled to her feet, weapon in hand, making a target of herself and not caring, only caring that she got to plant a bullet through the skull of the bastard who'd just shot her best friend.

But the people from the car were screaming, too. Because all hell had broken loose, and Yu held her fire, trying to make sense of what she saw.

Animals? That couldn't be right. But _something_ was happening, something that left one of the three people from the car beheaded and the other two fighting hard.

When you lived on the streets as long as Yu had, you didn't question good fortune - you took advantage of it. She lowered her gun and ran back to April's side, slapping her hands on top of Irma's, to slow the bleeding. It wouldn't do any good, but she'd fight to keep her best friend alive, until she lost.

She'd wonder about their new allies later. After April was dead.

* * *

"Be ready for anything," Splinter said, and then in that second the passenger door flew open and a woman, gun drawn, fired two shots at the girls walking down the block.

The five of them had been ready for a lot, but not an outright assassination attempt. Cursing himself a fool (_he should have thought of this!_), Splinter leaped from shadow to street light, ninjaken swung up and down, and cleaved cleanly through the woman's hand before further damage could be done.

There were two others in the car, getting out, and stunned by the appearance of their attackers. Human, no - Splinter's tail lashed angrily as the rat rushed the one from the back seat, an Asian man with some kind of sword weapon that might have been Japanese or might have been a cheap knock-off. The Asian staggered backward and yelled in terror, turning to flee.

Donatello and Raphael blocked him.

Nearly five-eleven, built as solid as a tank, with flesh almost military green and a shell hard enough to withstand armor-piercing rounds, Raphael blocked the Asian's clumsy downward thrust with one sai, the other sinking into the man's shoulder, scraping collar bone.

Donatello, shorter, heavier, more olive in color, his shell as sturdy as his brother's, lashed out with his bo staff, the sickening _crunch_ of bone splintering bringing the man to his knees, Raphael's sai still lodged in his shoulder.

The click on the other side of the car signaled that someone else - whoever was in the driver's seat - had cocked a revolver. Splinter wasted no time on the fallen pair on this side, nor did his sons give them a second thought. All three hopped onto the car, to survey the scene.

Michelangelo, the smallest and youngest of the four, though just as hardy and well-trained as his brothers, had come from behind the driver, striking him in the back of the head with his nunchuck. The bald man must have had one thick skull not to have gone down with that blow - another would probably be dead, his brain stem destroyed.

He went down, of course, but came up again with a revolver aimed, not for plastron or shell, but for Michelangelo's unprotected face.

The boy moved fast, not fast enough, was grazed along his cheek, and Splinter saw red. The man had gotten to his feet - he wouldn't remain there. Splinter hopped from the roof of the car, his other two sons following, when a long katana swept through the air and did what wood-and-iron-chain could not: the edge so sharp, the blade sliced through spinal column, neck, tendons, Adam's apple, and the man who had shot Splinter's son was dead.

Leonardo, the eldest, had started for the three girls, not realizing the resilience of Michelangelo's foe. Only when he heard the gunshot did the eldest son stop and double-back, killing the man without hesitance.

The whine of the car motor turning over was the only warning the five had to scatter, as the man with the broken leg and the woman with the missing hand somehow found their way back into the car and started it. Who was driving, Splinter couldn't see in the sudden blind of headlights. He and the children dove out of the path of the oncoming vehicle, watched from the ground as it swerved and spun down the street, away from them all.

"We can catch 'em!" Raphael said, getting to his feet, and Splinter almost agreed.

Then a cry - "Yu, she's _bleeding_ to death!" and all thoughts of giving chase left them at once.

Leonardo resumed his course to the girls' side. Splinter and the others followed. "What happened?" He demanded, and looked down at the red-haired woman stretched on the ground, her friend's hands covering her wounds.

The girl's red hair and green eyes, her pale skin and smattering of freckles, were so far and away from Tang Shen's dark Asian beauty that he should never have connected the two.

Except, he'd seen that look of helpless terror once, and his heart, so gently mended by time, shattered again.

* * *

"Yu, she's _bleeding_ to death!" Irma cried, realizing what Oyuki already knew - the bullets had gone through April's body, hitting who-knew-what vital spots. She'd been hit in the leg; good possibility that she'd been hit in a major artery and would bleed out in the next few minutes.

"I know," Oyuki whispered hoarsely, "just keep pressure on..." On what? What was the point? April was still breathing, but that wouldn't last much longer -

"What happened?"

Yu looked over her shoulder at the giant, well, rat, and almost vomited. Rats... they could be scary. Having a talking one asking you questions took that up to eleven.

Irma wasn't blinded by grief - the animals surrounding them were as strange to behold to her as they were to Oyuki. What she saw, though, was what Yu missed - the look of compassion in the rat's eyes, the look of horror the turtles wore, on faces that shouldn't have been able to express such emotion. She spoke when Yu didn't. "That lady shot her, here, and here!" She took one hand away to point to the wound on April's leg that Yu was holding closed.

The rat moved Irma's hands gently and took a quick look. "The gut wound is the worst," he decided. Glancing at Irma, he said, "I need your skirt - the orange one."

Since her blue skirt was flimsy and sheer, since the rest of her outfit was almost as bad, and the orange skirt she had on was thick cotton, that made enough sense to her. Irma stood and shimmied out of her skirt, covered still by the weightless blue thing and her tights. "What else do you need?"

The rat grabbed her blood-covered hands. "Hold it TIGHT. Make a seal. We're going to bind it around her to keep the bleeding at minimum." His sharp eyes went to Oyuki. "I said HOLD IT TIGHT!" He grabbed Yu's hands and made her put more pressure on the leg.

One of the turtles - he wore a red bandana - had leather belt he now stripped off, offering it to the rat to tie the cloth tightly to the wound. The rat slit the skirt in two with his, well, sword or whatever, and bunched the halves up to press hard into the gut wound, using the greater piece for the exit wound.

Two other turtles, one wearing orange, the other wearing blue, stripped their own belts off, and the one in blue took off his bandana. With these items, they made a makeshift tourniquet on April's leg, cutting off the blood flow there.

Oyuki didn't want to be hopeful, because she hated disappointments, but Irma's father and grandfather were both Rabbis, and her aunt Imogene would have smacked her across the ear if she'd admitted defeat. "She won't die, will she?" Irma asked the rat.

His dark eyes, dark HUMAN eyes, met hers squarely. "Not if I can help it," he said. That was enough for her.

* * *

Donatello let the others minister to the wounded girl's body while he sat beside her head, asking her questions - "Can you remember the date? What's your birthday? Do you know who's president?"

Her answers were hazy, except to the last - "Yeah, the asshole I didn't vote for," - which got a laugh out of him. "I'm Donnie," he said. "Can you tell me your name?"

"April." Her voice sounded far away, like she was trying to talk through a fog, or cotton. "O'Neil," she added. "I'm Irish."

"I never would have guessed." He held up a three-fingered hand. "How many fingers do you see?"

"...you know..."

"April? April, stay with me!"

"...I can't... deal with... this." Her eyes shut, head lulling to the side.

Mike looked up at her face in time to see her pass out. "Aww, she's no fun. She fainted."

"Blacked out is more like it, doofus," Don said, smacking his brother across the back of the head. "We have to get her to a hospital, pronto."

Their father looked back at the beheaded man, his face grim. "I doubt we would arrive in time, even if we were to call an ambulance. None of you saw who it was Leonardo killed."

"He shot Mike!" the eldest said in his defense.

"I know. I would have killed him myself if you hadn't beaten me to it. But he was one of the Foot - one of their generals - and now they know we're still alive."

The girl with the skirts and the glasses piped up. "So does that mean we're taking her to a hospital or what? I'm no doctor but I'm getting this feeling the longer we argue the more April's insides are going to spill outside!"

"We're taking her somewhere closer," Splinter assured her. "Raphael, carry her. We're going to have to move quickly -"

"_Dame_!" The dark-haired girl with the pigtails rolled from her knees to her feet, arm extended, gun drawn on the rat. "What the hell are you?" she demanded.

Raph got to his feet, the injured woman cradled in his arms like a baby, but he faced down the woman, getting between her and his father, his face reddening in rage. "We're the people _trying to save your friend's life_, bitch!"

"Raphael!"

The sharp word from his father made the taller turtle back down, though he continued to glower at the girl. Leonardo stood beside his brother, watching her silently. "Easy," he said, soothing. He raised his hands slightly, showing that he was unarmed. "Miss, your friend has a stomach wound. We don't have time -"

It didn't matter to the girl with the gun. Oyuki looked a little wild-eyed, holding her piece in a one-hand grip, her legs set apart. She looked professional. And terrified. "Some mooks shot at us, nailed my friend, and a bunch of rejects from a freak show come and start killing people, then go around like nothing's the matter. _KUSO!_ I'm going to ask you again." Her eyes narrowed as she scoped the turtles and their father in her sights. "What are you?"

Quick as a snake, Leo side-stepped the line-of-fire, his left hand smacking the gun out of alignment and grabbing the barrel, right hand chopping down on her wrist, forcing the gun out of her hand and distracting her enough that the girl didn't notice Michelangelo behind her until he had a hand raised and caught her in the neck, hitting the pressure point and knocking her to the ground.

Mike caught her and helped the girl to the ground. Donatello, who had remained kneeling where he'd been, looked over at the girl with the skirts and glasses. "We're going to take both your friends to get some help. Right now," he said calmly.

Irma nodded hard enough to make her glasses slide down her nose. "Hey, I'm good with that. Mind if I come with you?"

Splinter gestured to his children, making them start moving while he gathered up stray weapons that they had dropped in their haste. "You would be better off staying with us until we say otherwise," he told the girl without looking at her. "The man we killed was a gang leader, and his people will be looking for all of us. Since they've already shown they have no regard for your life..." He gestured to April, securely in Raphael's arms.

"Yeah, no kidding." The girl with the glasses watched Donatello get to his feet. "Little help?" She held out her hand. He practically lifted her off her feet. It took her a moment to get her balance. "Okay," she said, taking off her shoes and walking in just her stockings. "Let's go! ...where we going?"

* * *

"Where" turned out to be a nearby subway terminal. Mike carried Oyuki, who was groggy but aware. He'd used his bandana to tie her hands up - not that they were afraid she'd attack them; they didn't want her struggling away and getting herself hurt or lost on their way to, well, _wherever_ they were heading.

Irma introduced herself on the way as "Irma Langinstein, Third-Generation Shadchen. You already know April - that's the gunshot victim." Raphael continued to carry her with extreme care, even as they navigated some of the rougher parts of the New York City Subway System. "And the trigger-happy girl with the Sailor Moon pigtails is Oyuki Mamishi. Though don't ask me where she got the gun from. The only kind of kung-fu I thought she knew was how to make a cutting remark about a guy's testicles."

Donatello helped her through the treacherous obstacle course. "I'm Donatello. Donnie. It's a little easier on the tongue. The guy carrying April is Raphael. Leo's the guy who disarmed your friend - Leonardo. Michelangelo's the hauling her around. And our father is Splinter."

"So," she said, almost conversationally, "your dad's a rat. That's pretty cool. Mine's a Rabbi."

"We're Buddhist." The others crossed over a live track easily. Don paused to help her cross over without getting her stockings caught. They might be loose, but the stockings were a good deal more practical than the shoes she'd been wearing. "But Father makes us read a little bit of everything, including the Talmud."

"_Mazel Tov_. So how much further? April's looking a little white, don't you think?" Her sense of humor was feeling a little strained the longer they walked. Thankfully, none of them dawdled. If anything, Irma felt like she was slowing them down, though at points where she actually would have, Don simply picked her up and carried her until she could walk without delaying them again.

"Down there," he said, gesturing to a side tunnel. From the look of it, the tunnel had been blocked off for years, the tracks diverted or damaged. "We've got a friend who can help."

Splinter had headed the column, leading them as he had earlier in the evening toward the burn-out where Tang Shen had lived and died. The addition of the three females hadn't appreciably slowed them, for which he was proud of his sons. Although he didn't have the same medical knowledge as his friend, he was well aware that a stomach wound could kill in fifteen minutes or less.

He approached an ordinary-looking length of pipe and pulled back a hidden panel, revealing a long, stiff wire that appeared to run all the way back to wherever the pipe disappeared. Splinter reached in and pulled the line in a quick but complex series of yanks. Irma could dimly hear something that sounded like a hammer striking a bell off in the distance.

Two long, unnerving minutes passed before a brick in a seemingly solid wall slid back. The owner must have been bear-tall and broad from the look of those eyes, but Irma doubted he was a bear - the green skin around them and their reptilian slits made her quite sure she was looking at Donatello's cousin.

"Do you know what time it is?" the creature on the other end demanded in a sour voice that could probably have been heard halfway across the city.

"I have a girl here, with two gunshot wounds."

The eyes shifted from Splinter to Raphael. His shell was stained from chest to hip with drying blood, despite how tightly he and Splinter had bound the wounds. "This isn't a hospital," the voice said. "Go someplace else. I need my sleep."

"The girl is going to DIE, Leatherhead!" Splinter shouted as the brick started to slide back into place. "On THIS night, at THIS time!"

Leonardo, quiet until now, raised his voice as well. "We were on our way to the East River when everything went down! We can't just abandon them!"

"Them?" The eyes peered around. "Oh, great. You brought three of them. Look, I'm sorry you went through all this trouble but I don't treat humans -"

"_Tang Shen treated you!_" Michelangelo hissed, and Raphael added, "A lot better than you deserved!"

"It's been at least fifteen minutes since the girl was shot," Splinter took over again. "I'm not asking miracles of you, but damn you, you owe it to her memory to at least _try!_"

The brick slid back into place.

All four turtles and their father froze.

"Guys?" Irma looked around, from one shocked face to the next. "W-what do we do now?"

The boys looked to their father. He steeled himself and drew a breath, but whatever he was about to say was lost in the sound of steel grinding against steel as a hidden door opened.

The creature in the doorway stood six-foot-six, had broad shoulders, thick muscles, and a long, powerful tail. Irma recalled that a snout like that belonged to an alligator, not a crocodile. "Well? Get in here!" he grumbled. "We don't have all night."


	4. We Are the Weight We Carry

_She Don't Want the World_

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

_She Don't Want the World_

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for Full Disclaimer. The song "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down is used without permission.

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it.

**Author's Note:** I'm sorry this is so late - I've been sick and was doing some in-patient therapy in the hospital. Then my insurance (gotta love the American Insurance System!) decided it wouldn't pay for me to stay, so I've been doing out-patient therapy. My weekend hasn't been fun, but I did find enough "me time" to get this done. So, here's Chapter 4, and I'm hard at work on Chapter 5.

Please bear with me if I'm slower writing the next few chapters, as I've been very, very tired, and not feeling up to sitting up to eat, let alone sitting up at a computer to write. But I do have Chapter 5 started, and I'm going to keep plowing ahead, because I see where this is going, and I hope this is as much fun for y'all as it is for me!

**MG**

* * *

Chapter 4 - We are the weight we carry

* * *

_We have a weight to carry_  
_and a distance we must go._  
_We have a weight to carry_  
_a destination we can't know._  
_We have a weight to carry_  
_and can put it down nowhere._  
_We **are** the weight we carry_  
_from there to here to there.  
_-Dean Koontz, THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

* * *

"I don't exactly have a stocked hospital," the giant alligator said as he lead the group inside his lair. It looked like the home of an intellectual, a scholar with little desire for the outside world. The front room boasted a number of book shelves, all of them filled, most with some sort of medical texts, though there were many of great works from before the twentieth century. Irma recognized some of them; Oyuki, finally fully around from being knocked out, couldn't make out anything remotely familiar.

They didn't stop to look around, although Mike did pause to set Oyuki on her feet and unbind her wrists. At this point, Yu didn't have any choice but to follow and hope the giant beast they were following knew how to save her friend's life.

The room they entered next looked something like a bathroom, without a commode and with a long table in the center. He gestured to the table. Raphael gently settled his burden down on it.

"And," Leatherhead added, "I don't keep supplies for humans. You know why." He paused in the middle of scrubbing his hands to glare at the motley group hovering around the central table. "I'm not going to lie. It's been fifteen minutes. Maybe longer. I don't have blood for her. You know she's going to bleed out before I can patch her up. You _know_ it, Splinter."

"I'm not asking miracles," the rat repeated, but his eyes remained on the girl on the operating table.

Irma began bunching up her left sleeve. "Blood's not a problem. Type O-Negative."

All eyes turned to her, none more surprised than the alligator's. "How do you know?"

"My Synagogue has blood drives every month. I give twice a year." She looked around for someplace to lay down. "I think I'm about due."

The alligator finished cleaning his hands and yanked on surgical gloves. "All right. Don, this isn't the same as working on stray dogs. Can you help me with this or -"

The only answer he got was a shove out of the way as Don cleaned his hands and yanked on gloves.

Leatherhead became all business. "Mike, you've bled your brothers before. Get to it." He pointed to where Irma made herself as comfortable as possible. "The rest of you, stay the out of the way. Hell of a way to wake up, in the middle of the night..." His grumbling grew softer.

* * *

Raphael hadn't left the side of the operating table, though he'd been more interested in the interplay between Leatherhead and Splinter. L.H. could be a stubborn cuss if he decided he didn't want to do something. Splinter had just shown how much he could out-stubborn anyone. L.H. included.

So when a slim hand wrapped gently around his own, Raph blinked and looked down at the girl. Her eyes were open again, but she didn't seem coherent. "You 'wake?" he asked softly.

She made a sound he interpreted as yes.

"Picked a helluva time ta wake up. We're just gonna put you back to sleep in a second."

"'Sokay." That came out a bit clearer. "I got shot."

"Yeah, ya did. Twice. Good job."

"No... body else, right?"

"Nah. You're the lucky one."

L.H. said, "Move," and shoved Raph out of the way, sticking the girl in her arm with some sort of device that let him inject her indirectly. He hooked some sort of bag to a pole, something dripping down slowly into the girl's arm. Raph watched, feeling like he was standing outside his body. He'd killed people before. He always felt like he was right _there_, right in the thick of things, when it came to fighting and killing. None of this fuzziness that made him feel thin as a ghost being blown in a strong wind.

On the whole, Raph preferred the way killing felt.

L.H. cut the seams of the girl's - of April's - jeans, undressing her and exposing the two gunshot wounds. Then Don showed up, and they started doing more weird things with the bags hooked to her arms, and sticking electrodes all over her body, and then they started crowding him out and Raph couldn't see crap.

He walked around the table, moving to the other side to get a better view, except the wounds were on the opposite side, so he couldn't see what they were doing exactly. April was out again, this time from the drugs instead of from pain. She didn't look like a little kid or anything, but her face had a smooth look to it, kind of... innocent.

He glanced at the other two girls. Mike was busy sucking blood out of the girl with the glasses. She had this way of talking that reminded Raph of Donnie - someone who knew what the score was, no matter how bad things were, but who didn't give up hope without a fight. Pigtails, now, she was a Class A Pessimist, like Raph. He knew exactly how she felt because she couldn't keep the pissed-off off of her face. Not ordinary pissed-off, either. The scared kind. Raph didn't get the scared kind often, but he could see why she'd be feeling that way. She'd pulled a gun on their dad, for shit's sake! You didn't pull a stunt like that unless that was your friend there, and you cared about her.

Raph didn't have any _friends_ he felt that way about, but he'd felt like it about Mikey or Donnie. And once or twice, Leo did some stupid shit that made Raph's gut clench. Yeah. He got her. April got shot, and when she came to, all she wanted to know was if anybody else was shot. He could get behind Pigtail's anger. Mikey was like that. If Mike ever got shot, the first thing he'd ask when he woke up would be, "Did anybody else get shot?"

"Hey, L.H.?"

"I'm a little busy, Raphael."

"Just do me a favor?"

The alligator looked up at Raph impatiently.

"Make sure she wakes up."

L.H. huffed. "Not asking miracles my ass," he grumbled, and got back to work.

* * *

"Hi," Mike said to the girl laying down on one of the two couches in the room, "I'm Mike, and I'll be your vampire for the evening!"

"Nice to formally meet you," the girl with the glasses said. "I'm Irma, and I'll be your blood box for the evening. Uh, you _have_ done this before, haven't you? Not that I'm complaining, but if you're going to be earning your merit badge in blood drawing on me, I'd like to know in advance so I don't scream if it hurts."

Mike snickered and tied the upper part of her left arm with a length of plastic tubing, making the vein pop out nicely. "Yeah, don't worry. L.H. gave us all the first-aid basics, but me and Donnie were the only ones that didn't totally freak when we had to learn to take blood, so I'm the resident blood-sucker, and Donnie does that kind of stuff." He jerked his thumb back, indicating where Don stood behind Leatherhead, either helping to extract the bullet or stitching together damaged flesh.

"Oh, good. I've never taken anyone's virginity before, so I don't want to start now. Ow." The needle slipped in with almost no pain, but her immediate reaction was to say "Ow," no matter who drew blood from her. "Sorry, gut reaction."

Mike's grin was infectious. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't let you take my virginity anyway. You never told me my dress was pretty." Now the blood began to flow. Irma flexed and relaxed her hand without having to be told, keeping the blood pumping into the collection bag. She made a much better patient than, say, Leonardo. Leo had his own type of awesome, but it didn't include giving blood without freaking out. Cuts, bruises, almost losing a finger in battle, getting brained by accident when sparring, Leonard Hamato was fearless. Stick a needle in his arm, he went all white and had a death grip on whatever bed he got stuck on.

"So how does a nice guy like you get to be a phlebotomist on the side?" Irma watched the blood flow, at first fascinated, then a little sick. Why oh why couldn't she keep her eyes to herself whenever she was giving blood? She knew watching only caused her anxiety. Turning her eyes resolutely to the turtle taking said blood, she discovered he had pretty blue eyes, very different from the other three, who all had various shades of brown eyes.

"I didn't know I was cutting your brain out, but okay..." He dropped her a wink to show he was teasing. Irma still gave him an eye roll. "We can't exactly go to the local blood bank and get transfusions if we get hurt. Human blood doesn't cut it. So what we do is take blood for ourselves and hang on to it. Well, Leatherhead hangs on to it, not _us_, but you get what I mean."

He cut the tubing around her arm, letting the blood flow more quickly. The bag was already half-full. "How come you don't just hook me right up to April?"

Mike scratched his beak and looked over his shoulder. "Hey, L.H.?"

"Everybody shut up until we're done. That bag filled yet?"

"Almost." Mike gave Irma a shrug. "We'll ask when he's not being all life-saving and grumpy." The bag filled up and Mike got Irma disconnected as painlessly as he could. The handy thing about being a gator (or a rat for that matter, Mike decided), was having a tail you could use if you needed a third hand. L.H.'s tail was nowhere near as flexible as Splinters, say, but he used it to point to the biohazard waste bin where Mike tossed the used needle.

All that accomplished, bag in hand, Mike passed it on to Donnie, who hooked up April. "How long you guys known each other," he asked when he sat back down beside the still-reclining Irma.

Irma resettled herself, trying to find a comfortable position. She said, "Going on seven years. The three of us met in the eleventh grade and sort of stuck together. We all went to work for the same book store after we graduated, got into the same university two years ago. Basically just sort of stuck together. The Three Amigos, or whatever they call three chicks with co-dependency issues."

"Irma," Oyuki scolded.

Behind her glasses, Irma made her eyes _so_ wide and innocent, almost like she was heart-broken to be scolded. "Whaaaaaat? We're just talking!"

"Well, stop talking," the pigtailed girl snapped. "They aren't anything you want to talk to."

Two large hands settled onto the edge of the operating table. For the first time, Leatherhead looked away from his work on April, his eyes focused on the Japanese girl, as if slicing her open length-wise and peering into her brain.

Yu met that stare fearlessly. "Your friends kill people. Not just tonight - they've done it before."

Leonardo's soft voice broke through the tension, quiet, but like a jackhammer. "So have you."

The girl turned her regard on Leo, scowling slightly. Content for the moment that Yu wasn't about to have a fit of the "these-things-are-unholy-and-must-be-purged" type, L.H. went right back to work beside Donnie.

* * *

If Oyuki could stare down a giant, pissed-off alligator, Leo could respect her enough to talk to her. "So have you," he said again, quietly.

Her answer was a cautious, "I lived on the streets a while."

"But you didn't want to _die_ on the streets."

"Well, who the hell does?"

He grew thoughtful. "More than none, less than most, I'd suppose." When the girl cocked her head in confusion, he went on, "Most gang members are looking for a place to belong. If you can't find a family at home, find it on the streets. Correct? Some find a place, but it's filled with violence. Some choose to self-medicate, with alcohol or drugs, to ease the pain when they can't find their place. Most would rather live in peace to begin with. Since they can't, they're torn between doing evil for a substitute family, or dying."

Yu listened to the turtle's every word. "Do you always talk like that?"

And damned if the green-skinned guy didn't _blush_. "I read a lot."

* * *

Don sweated.

At least if he'd gone to medical school (like a human), he'd have practiced on cadavers. Regularly. Probably he'd be good at pulling things like bullets out of bodies by now, except there was no bullet to remove, no fragments or anything. Just a straight line, with a small hole in the front and a huge, gaping, ugly hole in the back. Same as with the leg, except the bullet hadn't gone through so much muscle in her leg. Their only real task was sewing her up. And there was _so_ much to sew up.

Maybe if Donnie had gone to medical school he wouldn't be shaking so much. Patching up dogs and cats hit by reckless drivers, or curing them of various illnesses that all animals got, or even dealing with things like cancers or tumors or whatever else could put an animal through misery, those were good training if he wanted to be a vet. Not such good training for being a doctor. L.H. had convinced all of them he wouldn't be around forever, probably not as long as _they_ were going to live, so someone had to learn how to keep them all alive when he was gone.

He just hadn't expected to be moving from stray cats to a real human so fast...

Leatherhead was taking care of the abdominal wounds first. Donnie's initial impression that the bullet had gone straight through her stomach, intestine, bowel, and out the back turned out to be incorrect. The bullet nicked April's large intestine, missed the stomach, made a mess of her uterus, and came out the side without hitting the large bowel.

That still left a large, ugly, nasty line that Leatherhead had to open up, clean out, and patch up. It meant making sure April didn't go into septic shock from toxic matter seeping out her injured colon, hunting down any trace of "bleeders" he might have missed in all this mess, and making sure everything was sealed up tight before patching her up.

There was no conversation between them. Leatherhead would occasionally spout something out and expected Don to jump. Not like how the sitcoms made it look - when you were working inside a living thing, you didn't talk to Leatherhead. You just shut up and listened, did what he told you, and kept the hell out of his way."Clamp that off," L.H. said. Donnie got to clamping. "I need a sponge there." Donnie sponged. "Check her heart rate." Donnie checked. So far so good.

Donnie's job was keeping blood out of the way so L.H. could see, monitoring April's vitals, making sure she got enough blood, supplying her with antibiotics, and trying very hard not to let Leatherhead see his hands shake.

* * *

Leonardo would glance occasionally at the operating table, then have to look away. They had killed before, though not often, and not many. It never left unnerved like watching the girl being cut open and closed up from the inside out. He focused his attention back on the girl with the pigtails. "Do you know why they were shooting at you?"

"Man, I don't even know who the hell they were." She folded her arms, a scowl pinching her face. "You said you know them."

He returned her scowl with a grimace of distaste. "The three people in the car? Not personally, no, but we know _of_ them. They're... you could say gang leaders, except the gang they run is under another group. You know what _Yakuza_ are?"

From where she still lay prone, the girl with the glasses piped up, apparently loathe to be left out of any conversation. "I don't!"

Pigtails glanced at her briefly. "You know what the Mafia are? Criminal organization families?"

"Like in _The Godfather Part II_?"

"Yeah," she said, "only Japanese." Leo noticed Pigtails never quite left her back vulnerable. Right now she wasn't pressed up against a wall, but from her vantage point she could look back and forth between Leonardo on her right and Mike and her friend on her left, without leaving enough space for anyone to get behind her.

Her attention went back to Leo. "Do they usually randomly shoot people?"

"The Foot Clan? No. Especially not the area we were in. That was Purple Dragon territory."

Glasses scrunched her nose. "Foot Clan? Purple Dragons?"

Leo shrugged. "I didn't come up with the names."

Mike interrupted, "I think there's some secret law somewhere that if you form a gang, you got to have some kind of funky name that makes people go, 'the hell?' And 'Foot Clan' and 'Purple Dragons' are no weirder than Sex Money Murder, The Almighty Latino King and Queen Nation, or Friends Stand United. At least 'Foot Clan' and 'Purple Dragons' are short and to-the-point."

Pigtails brought the conversation back around to her questions. "So you know them, and they know you? The Foot Clan, I mean."

"We hate them," Leo said flatly. "And they hate us. I think, prior to this, they didn't believe we were still alive. Father lead us to believe as much. So we rarely venture where they can see us, and we try not to leave survivors, lest they tell their superiors that we're not dead after all." He realized he'd gone off at the mouth again. _Spending a chapter on what could've been a paragraph_, as Mike put it. "We don't announce ourselves," he finished lamely.

"But you've fought them before."

"We've taken small numbers of them out before. Usually when they get too close to our home, or if we happen to catch them doing something criminal." The girl with the pigtails did an admirable job of looking between Leo, Mike and Glasses, and the girl on the operating table without missing a beat or seeming to strain her neck. Thinking about the girl L.H. and Donnie were operating on, an idea struck him. "Would your friend know why you were shot at?"

"Who, April?" The incredulity in her voice convinced him they weren't going to get any answers from the red-haired girl when she woke up.

_If_ she woke up.

He tried hard not to think about that. Their father had raised them to justice and honor, valuing every life, seeking to end suffering. Failing this stranger would be failing his father.

Pigtails said, "April's grew up around here before half the neighborhood burned down and the whole place went to shit. She's as clueless as they come."

"Red's not clueless!" Glasses said, jumping to their friend's defense. "She's just a flaming optimist."

Pigtails looked at Glasses, amused. "She lived with Baxter for _how_ long?"

"...yeah, okay, she's clueless." Glasses shrugged. "One of my aunts reads tea leaves. I could maybe ask her to look into it, find out why April got shot. Though chances are, if I do, she'll tell me that April's got some weird cosmic fate and that's why she got shot, or something. Comes with the territory."

"Tea leaves?" Conversations between these girls were like labyrinths, leading you on a meandering walk until they reached the heart, then meandering back out again. Trying to steer the conversation back to something like the original topic, he chose to ignore any further tea leaf comments. "Look, none of us have a clue why they were after you, but we'll have to assume they'll be looking for you, _and_ for us. For now, I don't think it's safe for you to leave."

Pigtails pointed to the operating table. "We wouldn't leave anyway. Too much weird shit going on tonight." Weariness finally hushed her questions, which pleased Leonardo. Splinter's eyes were fixed on the operating table, his ears attuned only to the soft murmurs between Leatherhead and Donatello. Until he could speak with his father, Leo didn't want to risk trying to explain... things. He wasn't sure what Splinter would consider necessary for the young women to know for their own safety, and what would be off limits. Tired himself, he sank down against the wall, feeling the cold brick behind his shell, and remembered, suddenly, painfully, that they had never sent their candles down the river.

* * *

Two hours of cutting, clamping, repairing, searing, snipping, whatever else they were doing. Splinter watched. He watched his son pretending not to be nervous, and Leatherhead pretending not to give a damn about the girl they were operating on.

He watched the girl start twitching, and Donatello giving her another sedative. Above all, he watched her face, relaxed from the medication, smooth out into gentle sleep. She had a face nothing like Shen's, but in this world, Splinter believed there were no coincidences. Whatever the reason, however it came to pass, the women - girls, really - arrived at this confrontation tonight for a reason.

Destiny had a sick way of rearing its ugly head when it wanted to make a point.

At the moment, he didn't give a damn about destiny, or the past, or the future. Right now, these three girls had somehow ended up in his care. Right now, all he wanted was to hear good news.

Two hours of surgery. Raphael got the blood cleaned off of him, and grumbled because his sai was long gone, still lodged in the collar bone of the Asian man. Leonardo folded his legs down into a lotus position, eyes shut in meditation. Michelangelo and the girl with the glasses, Irma, continued to prattle on in quiet conversation, mostly about April, though they skirted the topic of her wounds and whether she would make it out alive or not. Eventually she fell into a light doze. The Asian girl, Oyuki, paced for a while before taking the other couch and curling up, though he doubted she really slept. Donatello seemed to be zoning out, mechanically following Leatherhead's orders without giving any sign that he really _heard_ the alligator giving them.

And then the last stitch. Leatherhead put down the needle and suture. "We're done," he said.

Donatello blinked, then blinked again, as if he didn't quite understand what Leatherhead had said, or didn't believe him. But looking down at the girl they had worked so diligently on for the last two hours, there was no denying the work was done. The last patches covered the wounds, and there was nothing further to do. The two of them gently transferred April from the operating table to a recover bed, laying a light blanket over her to ward off the cold without putting too much pressure on her wounds.

Leatherhead looked from his work to Splinter. "No guarantees," he said again, cautioning against hope. "The last thing I had cut open on this table was a dying raccoon. I sterilized the room, but this is hardly an emergency room. And having all of you in here didn't necessarily help, either."

"I understand," Splinter assured his friend. And he did, truly. All Leatherhead had done was raise her chances from zero to fifty percent. He could suppose that half a chance was better than nothing, but if he had to go on instinct, Splinter would bet on her recovery.

His ears swiveled back as the two girls, behind him, stumbled up and tried to reach their friend.

The alligator took a step forward and sideways, getting in their way. "She needs to rest. So do you, from the look of you. The boys are used to sleeping on my floor when needed, so you two can have the couches."

"She's our friend," Oyuki said, her tone for once not full of anger or frustration. "We want to keep an eye on her, until she wakes up."

"I'll stay up with her. I doubt I could get much sleep at this point, anyway."

It was Irma who set her jaw in a stubborn line. "No offense, but you're an asshole. Which I'm sure makes you a great doctor, but you're still an asshole. When she comes to, someone nice should be there. Not you."

Leatherhead's brow furrowed in anger, his mouth dropping in surprise. The look was comedic enough. Add his reptilian features and his face was comedic enough to make even Splinter lower his head slightly, so that his smile couldn't be seen. When he had control of himself, he spoke up. "I will stay awake with her."

Irma looked him over, then shrugged. "Okay," she said without protest. Content that someone not an asshole would greet their friend when she awoke, Irma walked back to the couch and flopped down on it, curling up and falling off to sleep in an instant.

Oyuki stood awkwardly in front of the rat, her mouth twitching slightly. Her eyes cast off to one side. "Thanks," she muttered, returning to her own couch. He doubted she would actually sleep for some time, but even without sleeping, her body needed the rest.

Leatherhead snorted, then gave Leonardo a light kick in the plastron, making the boy open his eyes wide. "Get your brothers and get out of the operating room," he snapped. "Your father's staying with the girl." That was all the alligator said, storming off to a small cubby he used for a bedroom. He threw himself down on the bed with his back to the room and yanked the covers up to his ear holes, shutting them all out.

Leonardo looked bemused, from Leatherhead to Splinter. "Go on," the father said quietly. Tired as he was, his eldest stood, giving Michelangelo and Raphael each a shake and shooing them out of the sterile room. Donatello scrubbed his hands clean, then scrubbed them again, finally starting to feel the exhaustion he'd held off by sheer will before this. Leonardo stopped him from washing his hands an unnecessary third time and turned him away from the sink. The two of them stumbled into Leatherhead's living area. Their father watched long enough to be sure they each found someplace to curl up - a couch, a chair, two on the floor - before pulling up a stool to watch over his new charge.

He took her hand between his. She was so cold, her face so pale, but she'd survived this far. On this night, of all nights, Splinter didn't ask for miracles, because he didn't feel the need. "Rejoicing in the compassion of Buddha," he whispered, not in English but in his native Japanese, "respecting and aiding all sentient beings, I shall work towards the welfare of society and the world." He gazed down at the girl, voicing his prayer of thanksgiving, for being at the right place, at the right time, whether by Buddha's will, or because Shen's spirit stayed with them this night, he didn't care. "Namu Amida Buddha."


	5. Time is a Valuable Thing

_She Don't Want the World_

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for Full Disclaimer. The song "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down is used without permission.

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - Sorry about the delay on this chapter. We're having some "issues" with my job about when I can go back to work. Blah. I'm working on Chapter 6. Hopefully it won't take nearly as long to get posted as 5 did.

* * *

Chapter 5 - Time Is a Valuable Thing

* * *

Baxter Stockman sat by the phone, waiting. Midnight came and went, then one o'clock, then two. He'd gotten in a brief nap after his initial phone call with his "associates," but not nearly enough to make up for his recent lack of sleep due to his scientific research. Nervous tension woke him, kept him up.

A strong cup of coffee did little to settle his nerves, but it helped him focus. He didn't have the pleasure of the laptop anymore, but there were legal pads and plenty of paper. He wrote criticisms, commentary, whatever came to mind. They could be typed up on his work computer later.

Two-thirty came and went and he heard nothing back. He found himself gnawing on the eraser end of his pencil. A filthy habit, really, but catching himself doing it and stopping it were two different things. Besides, he'd smoked the last of his cigarettes earlier.

At a quarter to three the phone rang.

He let out an explosive, "Thank God!" and snatched it up. Caller ID came up blank, but it always did when they called. He punched the talk button and said, "You got the laptop?"

It was the Asian this time, not the woman. "No," he said. "Antoine's dead."

It took Baxter a moment to remember who Antoine was. He only ever thought of them as the Asian, the woman, and Baldy. "Wait, dead? Dead how? April couldn't -"

The Asian cut him off. "A situation's come up. A lot worse than the thing with the laptop. Believe me, a _lot_ worse."

"But our clients -"

"Shut up and listen!" the Asian hissed into the phone. Baxter shut up, gnawing on the pencil nervously. "I've already told our boss what's been going on. He's sending over some guys to get you."

Somewhere someone hammered on a door, when it truth it was Baxter's heart hammering in his chest. "I thought you said he'd kill us! That he had 'standards!'"

"Ordinarily, yeah. But seriously, something came up. Something bigger than the shit on the laptop. He wants to see you. Says he's got a deal for you."

This time the knocking didn't stop. This time it was on the apartment door. "If I were you," the Asian said, "I'd go with them. 'Cause you can end up nine kinds of dead if you don't, but you go, and you listen to the boss, there's maybe a way you can end up staying alive. Me and Emmy going to the boss was the only thing that kept us alive."

The knocking became a hammering as loud as Baxter's heart. "I hear they're there," the Asian said. "Don't screw yourself. Go with them."

"But what -" But the line disconnected before he could fully frame his question.

His mouth had gone terribly dry. Conversely, his face was covered with a sheen of sweat that fogged his glasses up. He hadn't changed clothes; still in his slacks and button-down shirt, maybe he looked presentable, or maybe he'd be shot on sight. Or maybe the "boss" wouldn't care either way.

Nine ways dead, versus one way to maybe stay alive. _Maybe_.

It was still better than nine ways dead. Before the men outside his door could pound again, he opened it. There were five of them, and they looked like nobody in particular. Men who could be in their twenties or thirties, though not in their teens or forties. None of them remarkable, except the man who had been banging on his door. Asian, that one, and wearing a tank top that showed off his _yakuza_ tattoos.

That one spoke. "Dr. Stockman." He smiled. Baxter didn't feel reassured. "Mr. Oroku wants to see you."

* * *

Baxter wasn't sure what he was expecting. Maybe something more plush, with all sorts of amenities, like faux granite walls that hid television sets or thick carpets that cost more than a small city. What he entered looked like your typical business building, and while the art on the walls was of higher quality than he'd seen in most offices, every room and hallway had the same blandness he was used to anywhere. Like his subordinates, Mr. Oroku's buildings were nondescript. They could be anything.

Mr. Oroku wasn't the sort that took chances.

Sweat stains spread from Baxter's armpits to discolor his dress shirt. There was no help for it. Despite the stains, he refused to lose his composure. Head up, he followed his captors with a solid stride. They lead him through a maze of hallways to a waiting room that he didn't spend much time in. The secretary placed a brief call in Japanese while he stood surrounded, then pressed a button and gestured them all inside the main office.

Here was the first indication that the man Baxter was meeting was somebody. He certainly _looked_ like somebody. Handsome face, bold features, perfectly tailored Valentino suit, oh, he was somebody, all right. The curved custom-made executive desk he sat behind, with its marble top and rich, hand-carved designs, said loudly that he knew he was somebody. A calm somebody who sat on a chair that looked like it was ostrich leather, with his hands laying still on the chair arms, not moving at all.

The guest chair was not nearly so elaborate, but still showed its expense. The men who had escorted him stayed near the door, glaring at Baxter expectantly. Baxter - Dr. Stockman - had realized on the trip here that more than likely he would end up dead by the end of this encounter. If that were the case, his dignity would be the last thing to leave him. Head raised, stride even, ignoring the sweat beneath his arms, Baxter took up the seat across from Oroku Saki and calmly set his hands on the arms, mimicking his "host's" posture.

Mr. Oroku's eyes slid to the five guards, then silently to the door. The five _yakuza_ guards bowed and saw themselves out without need for further command.

The two of them regarded each other silently for several minutes. The doctor and the _yakuza_ lord. Oroku raised a brow when he saw that Baxter met his gaze evenly, and did not back down.

"Dr. Stockman," Oroku finally acknowledged. Baxter inclined his head in agreement. "I believe you know who I am."

"Mr. Oroku. I've heard about you from my associates."

"They told you I was their _oyabun_, correct? Their 'godfather,' if you will."

"Correct."

"They also told you the sort of work my... organization is engaged in. And what we do not engage in."

"They told me."

Oroku leaned back in his chair. It rocked back slightly, while he raised his hands to steeple his fingers beneath his chin. "Dr. Stockman, what, exactly, was your role in this operation that you and my generals were engaged in?"

Baxter decided to level with Oroku. He might be dead one way or another, but Oroku would know if he was lying, and while Baxter didn't expect to live, he didn't want his final hours to be filled with pain and suffering. "Encryption. Plain and simple. I'm a noted bio-technician with dual PhDs in Computer Science and Biology, and a Master's degree in Engineering. After I delivered an address on campus about encryption in the genetic code, one of your generals - the Asian man - approached me and asked if I had any applicable skill at cryptography. He explained to me the nature of the products he wanted encrypted, and told me that if I could come up with a cipher that would prevent legitimate authorities from EVER finding the contents, as well as a key that could be easily distributed without raising suspicion, that the three of them would give me a cut of the profits."

The simple twitch of an eyebrow, the slight rise at one corner of his mouth. Oroku could speak volumes without uttering a sound. "A noted professor with tenure at a well-recognized university, with two PhDs and a Master's degree, in need of extra spending cash?"

The mockery in Oroku's tone soured the taste in Baxter's mouth. His lips tightened to form a hard line, eyes narrowing, as the past once again intruded on his present, and made a mockery of his future. "Some of my early research was considered controversial," he said, each word as sharp and sour as vinegar. "I could never receive any funding for my _real_ work. Always, every dime ever granted me, every ounce of research, had to be accounted for. Tenure means nothing when it comes with conditions that prevent one from fulfilling one's true potential, from achieving true genius!" He found himself gripping the arms of the chair so tightly his fingernails dug into the leather, and forced his grip to relax. "But," he added, lowering his voice and forcing himself to calm down, "I'm quite sure that's of no interest to you."

Oroku shrugged. "It is and it isn't. I understand your research better than you know," he said, which surprised Baxter, "though it doesn't pertain to me directly. Let us say that I have an interest in your work, and that I'm willing to help you." Though he smiled, there was nothing comforting in the look Oroku gave Baxter. "To a point."

Cautiously optimistic that perhaps his life was not about to come to an end, Baxter drew a calming breath. "What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, Oroku returned his hands to the arms of his chair, sitting forward. "Why the girl's laptop? Why not your own computer, or a computer specifically purchased for the operation?"

"It was handy, and I didn't want to risk anyone hacking into my work station computer and finding out what I was doing." Baxter wondered where this line of questioning was going. "The university has high standards, but that doesn't mean the student body won't occasionally try to buck the system, sometimes by illegal means like hacking. In order for me to encrypt the product, I have to receive it in its raw form, then translate it into code. The last thing I needed was to have some idiot undergrad finding the raw product and turning me in before I could cover my ass. April used her laptop for taking notes in class, writing me love letters, and playing the occasional video game. The odds of her finding the raw product before I could encrypt it was almost zero."

The narrow-eyed Oroku raised one shoulder in an indifferent shrug. "So the girl left, along with your latest batch of 'goods,' and my generals went after her and her friends to clean up your mess. Correct?"

Baxter had to agree. "That's true, though I don't have a clue how your general ended up dead. They were supposed to kill three undergrads, get a laptop, and bring it back. I don't see how that could have gone wrong."

Oroku didn't answer him right away. Instead he said, "Under ordinary circumstances, had I found out what you and my generals were up to, I'd have my men killed without a second thought and simply leave you to your 'clients.' No doubt they would kill you outright. However, these are _not_ ordinary circumstances."

The _oyabun_ opened a drawer in his immense desk and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He helped himself to one, then offered the pack to Baxter. The draw of nicotine was too intense for him to pass up; he took Oroku up on the offer, even sharing a lit match that Oroku shook out and deposited in what looked like a piece of ancient pottery. Baxter wondered if it was a simple replica designed to function as an ashtray, or if Oroku had such little regard for the condition of antiques.

"No," Oroku repeated, "these are not ordinary circumstances. I don't know how it happened, but certain, shall we say, 'people' I assumed were dead happened to stumble upon my generals trying to kill your former paramour and her friends. They were the ones who did the damage. I suspect, since all signs of the three women are now gone, that this April and her friends are with them."

"And the laptop as well, I suppose," Baxter said bitterly.

"You should know that my surviving generals gave me the names of your clients. They are more afraid of me," Oroku said with a smile, "than they are angry at you. I'm willing to propose a deal. Find the women, and you'll find the freaks I'm looking for." The term _freaks_ surprised Baxter; Oroku spoke the word without anger, or any emotion at all. "Find the freaks -" That word again. "- and you'll find the laptop. But I think when you understand what I'm looking for, you'll be more interested in working with _me_ than in submitting trash to random perverts who can barely offer you the funds you need to perform your real experiments."

A soft beep made Baxter look down at his wrist. His watch had signaled the turn of the hour; it was now 6 AM Saturday morning. There were no clocks in the room that Baxter could see, and Oroku wore no watch. Maybe Oroku had timed his speech, or maybe he was one of those people with an excellent internal clock. Either way, it was an impressive feat. Seventy-two hours. He had until 6 AM Tuesday morning to find April and her friends.

He couldn't stop the helpless feeling that froze his guts. "Wouldn't you have better resources to find them than I? I don't have an entire army of thugs at my disposal."

Oroku's face didn't change a twitch. "I could have my army of thugs, as you say, look for the freaks, but since she was your woman, letting you find her would be easier than hunting them down. The things that have your woman have an ironic sense of justice." THINGS? Baxter wondered. "Find her, take her, and they'll come looking for her. It saves me time and resources. Or, you could say no, and take your chances with your clients on your own, and I'll just do it the hard way. One way or another, I'll get what I want. I'm offering you a chance to get what you REALLY want. A chance to further your research. Find the freaks, and you'll have your next batch of experimental subjects. You won't be reduced to taking these 'side jobs' to illegally fund your projects. I'll even donate a research facility to you."

Baxter hesitated, feeling that he was being lured into a trap. "I don't do experiments on humans," he said cautiously.

"That's not a problem," Oroku said, his smile widening. "The freaks that have your woman aren't human."

* * *

April didn't come out of the anesthesia slowly. Her eyes flew open. She gasped for air. God, did her mouth taste horrible, and so dry. There was a dim glow somewhere to her left. A warm hand held hers. And everything around her belly HURT.

She stared at a concrete floor. No, ceiling. She lay on her back, and that way was up, so she looked at a ceiling, right? It wasn't very inspiring. Back when she last visited the dentist, his ceiling had pictures of ducks and geese on it, and pretty music in the background.

"Easy," a voice said. She looked at the guy holding her hand, except instead of a guy, it was a giant rat. "You mustn't strain yourself. You're still recovering."

"Oh." Look back up. The ceiling was still concrete. Look back at the guy. The guy was still a rat. "I don't think I'm dead." Her voice came thick from a mouth that felt like cotton.

"No," the rat agreed. Then he smiled, which should have freaked her out, but it didn't look weird like it should. It just looked... normal. "You are very much alive, though I dare say it was a close call."

"Yeah, I hurt too much for heaven, and you're too nice to be a demon." That got a soft laugh from him. "And I'm not dreaming 'cause if I were you'd be Harrison Ford."

"Isn't he a bit mature for you?"

"Nah. I like older guys. And he was totally hot in COWBOYS AND ALIENS." Her eyes drifted shut, then jerked open again. "My friends here?"

"Yes. They're both sleeping now." He moved slightly so she could see where Oyuki and Irma slept on the two couches behind him. "You should try to sleep again."

"Okay." She allowed her eyes to fall shut. "Make sure they're here when I wake up."

The rat brushed her red hair away from her face. "I will," he whispered, watching her fall asleep.


End file.
